


An Endless Summer

by virginianwolfsnake



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: F/F, bisexual murder girlfriends having a great time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-10-28 22:17:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10840596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virginianwolfsnake/pseuds/virginianwolfsnake
Summary: After the fire at the Hotel Denouement, one presumed-dead villainess searches for another.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bea_bickerknife](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bea_bickerknife/gifts).



> The beginning of a work I will hopefully actually finish. Inspired by and very much dedicated to bea_bickerknife, without whom this would certainly have never existed!

When she reads about the fire in the newspaper, it’s only natural for her to assume that Esmé was on the correct end of the match.

She imagines a meticulously planned escape, which will _obviously_ have gone wrong somehow because _someone_ , without mentioning any names, would have managed to forget the plan in the middle of a _soliloquy_ or some similar pathetic egotistical display. But she digresses. She imagines a blaze set in the lobby in the middle of the night, exits locked behind them, speeding off into the night towards some other adventure. She doesn’t think about it long.

It’s only weeks later, when she catches sight of the obituary over her morning espresso, that her chest constricts. The chill extends all the way through her ligaments and into her fingertips, stubbornly persistent despite the warmth of the cup.

_Jerome and Esmé Squalor_ , the paper says when she numbly forces herself to read the words, so unashamedly presenting them as the couple she knows too well that they never were. About someone else, in another circumstance, perhaps Georgina would find some sympathy for the author tasked with creating the crisp, professional, hundred-words-or-less obit of a woman a large segment of polite society knows made a hobby of kidnapping and attempting to murder several children, but it’s all _so_ wrong. How can they not mention how unfalteringly determined she was, how breathtakingly passionate or how staggeringly ambitious? How _dare_ they not?

_His wife_ , they write, filling gaps in a template, _Esmé Gigi Geniveve, a retired actress and former financier born to unknown parents in an unknown location on an unknown date, also died at approximately 10am as a result of injuries sustained in connection with the same incident. The Polynices Funeral Service has been entrusted with arrangements._

It is tantamount to an insult. With painful clarity, one bizarre positive thought pushes through the haze and to the forefront of her mind; _she would be glad that they left out her date of birth._

But of course she can’t _actually_ be dead. When the shock begins to wear off, Georgina remembers coughing up lungfuls of water on the riverbank and shaking ashes from the furnace out of her hair, and she _knows_. Or, at least, she thinks she knows. She hopes.

_If you’re still alive and you’ve killed her_ , she thinks, hoping that the _someone_ for whom those words are intended can feel the venom packed into every single syllable across however many miles separate them, _I’ll kill you. I give you my word that I will._

Temporarily soothed by issuing a conditional vow of revenge, Georgina manages the muddled tangle of feelings coiled deep in her chest in the only way she can – methodically, and efficiently, though admittedly with slightly less finesse than normal. Hysteria will not help.

It occurs to her only after her first disastrous attempt that she should have known that the funeral service wouldn’t have appreciated being asked if they were actually in possession of the body. She waits as long as she can and calls back, rephrasing the question in her finest and most charming French accent.

“I only work on the front desk,” the confused voice replies. “I assume there’s a body somewhere.”

“You _assume_?”

“Oh, sorry. Assume means guess.”

“Yes,” Georgina forces out patiently, tightening her grip on the receiver. She mentally chants her favourite idiom and forces a smile that she hopes Sam from Polynices Funeral Service – or Polynesia Funeral Services, as he’d pronounced it on his first attempt – can detect. “I know. But is there no way you could check?”

The inevitable short, uncomfortable silence that always follows asking a Saturday assistant to perform duties above its pitifully low pay-grade follows.

“That isn’t really my job.”

“Well, then,” Georgina growls, dispensing with the French accent and wondering if you can just throw out the honey and the vinegar and catch those disgusting flies with an enormous flamethrower instead. “Is there any chance that I might speak to the organ grinder rather than the _monkey_ , Sam?”

A breath, and then nothing.

“Sam,” she tries.

Silence.

“ _Sam_ ,” she hisses.

Nothing. Perhaps hysteria _will_ help, after all.

After several minutes consisting of a clenched-jaw, muffled scream of pure frustration, the low _crack_ of a telephone receiver being flung wildly against exposed brickwork, whispering of numbers in a backward sequence from a hundred and the _clink_ of a bottle of whiskey against the edge of a favourite tumbler, Georgina thinks she might be ready to start again.


	2. Chapter 2

On a damp autumn morning spent in the Veritable French Diner – _just in case_ – Georgina stares dispassionately at one of the back-pages of The Daily Punctilio, marvelling at the depths of her own desperation.

 _Hello! I hope that you are having a wonderful day which started as soon as your alarm clock began ringing. E has always been my favourite letter, but more importantly; if you are looking for a new, adorable pet dog, then you are in luck! I am selling my two dogs, who are enormously friendly animals and have normal features. They are both alive as well, which is a plus. If you want one, please try to get hold of me and we can discuss. Contact details can be obtained through this newspaper and asking about me – please ring the main office. I am really, really looking forward to hearing from you. You have no idea how much. Georgina_.

A lazy attempt, perhaps, but Georgina can forgive herself for that. Eight solid days spent repeatedly dipping in and out of the _innest_ establishments in the City this week were tiring enough, for both her patience and her bank balance, but a further three days of trawling phonebooks for the numbers of people she thinks Esme might have mentioned once – and the subsequent vastly awkward phone calls and endless botched voicemail messages – haven’t exactly put her in the mindset for creating perfect code.

She considers her remaining options. It is always difficult to figure out how to get in touch with someone when you do not have their telephone number, so that you cannot simply give them a call, home address, so that you cannot simply pay them a visit, or current co-ordinates, so that you cannot even attempt to deliver them a handwritten letter via carrier pigeon – and more difficult _still_ if any mutual associates you once shared are currently presumed dead, and do not have any of those things either. An attempt to create a list on the back of a napkin ends with Georgina just scrawling the word OLAF in furious looped cursive and then crossing it out eleven or twelve times, after which she scrunches up the napkin and drops it into her empty cup. Hysteria will _not_ help.

Perhaps she has left the City – that, she supposes, wouldn’t be unwise. But when she tries to picture it, she recalls evenings in rooftop bars, watching obsidian eyes look out over the matchbox cars and toy houses with a peculiar singularity, like an heir contemplating its future empire, and it’s _wrong_ again. Esme _is_ the City, and the City was once, even in her mind alone, practically hers. She couldn’t belong anywhere else.

Frustrated partly by her own inability to figure out the solution to her problem and partly by the glances she has been receiving from the waiter who has been eager to clear her table for the last two hours, Georgina folds the paper under her arm, lays down an inordinate amount of bills to cover the outrageously overpriced coffee and stands.

Georgina has always known that, more often than not, when you stop looking for something, it materialises frustratingly in front of your eyes almost immediately. She remembers spending two hours looking for the glasses she had misplaced – _looking_ being rather more difficult without them – only to find once she settled, defeated, into an armchair and resigned herself to temporary short-sightedness, that they were resting comfortably on the right arm next to her. She remembers, too, the blissful couple of days after vowing that she was no longer _looking_ to view another person romantically ever again in her entire life, and the sinking, helpless feeling when she watched a dark, sculpted eyebrow quirk playfully across the table and realised that once again, she had been found rather than the other way around.

And so it was, too, on that dull autumn morning. Quite ready to take a short break from her search and invest time instead in a much-needed nap, Georgina is prevented from leaving the Veritable French Diner by a flurry of commotion at the entrance.

She is vaguely aware of the front of house fussing heavily over what must be a favourite patron, of waiting staff all coming to a sudden halt and gravitating towards the action, and she rolls her eyes – no matter movie star, politician, C-list radio talk-show host, disgraced weatherman or renowned philanthropist, she isn’t interested. She can already see a thick-knuckled but contrastingly rather impeccably manicured male hand clutching a crutch below a Rotary watch, and if it isn’t _her_ , it isn’t noteworthy. Entirely devoid of the energy required to push past, she allows herself a heavy sigh and leans against the countertop to wait.

“Printed in error, it would seem,” comes the slightly awkward response to whatever question is being asked most repetitively by the staff. “I did call and ask them to retract it, but – well, I suppose they probably have their hands full.”

“Is there _anything_ we can get for you, Mr Squalor? Anything at all?”

The realization hits her sharply, like a nasty electric shock or the sting of a match burned too close to fingertips. Georgina rocks forwards, guided by pure _need_ rather than by logic, and very nearly collides with the turned back of her impatient waiter, who has also joined the group.

“Well, a seat would be really nice, if there is one available,” he responds, so overly polite that Georgina would normally consider it comical – but in her current state, she is in no mood to make jokes. “And perhaps breakfast, if I’m not too late.”

“ _Never_ too late, Mr Squalor, not at _all_ , we are all so _delighted_ –”

The crowd parts to let him through, but in all of her anxiousness, Georgina fails to follow their lead and fails to act on the concern in the back of her mind that she could be about to be recognized. Looking highly flustered by all of the attention he has received and vaguely uncomfortable about the way the front of house keeps trying to link their arms, Jerome’s eyes quirk up and meet hers.


	3. Chapter 3

As it turns out, she was wrong to be concerned. There is a tiny narrowing of his gaze that indicates some modicum of recognition, but Georgina prides herself on her ability to practically read minds, and she thinks she can already tell that he can’t truly place her.

“Mr Squalor,” she manages, with all the professionalism and composure she can muster. “What a pleasure to see you again, alive and well!”

He chuckles awkwardly, and his eyes shift almost imperceptibly to the right – trying to place her in his memory, she thinks, and struggling to. Now that it’s happening, Georgina remembers a wild rant about Jerome’s complete _inability_ to remember the combination of faces and names, and how utterly humiliating this was when he mistook a vastly important client for one of the catering staff and attempted to pass him an empty champagne flute. _Perfect_.

“ _Eleanor,_ ” she clarifies, with the first name that springs to mind.

Predictably, he pretends to remember. “Ah, _yes_ – so sorry, it’s been a bit of a long week. How are you?”

“Well, thank you,” she smirks, sliding in alongside him to accompany him to a table despite the obvious lack of an invitation to do so. Grinning in a way she hopes will read as charming, she slides her bag under the seat opposite to make it abundantly clear that she has every intention of staying put and slips seamlessly into a character that she feels he might have come across once or twice before. “Still in real estate, unfortunately. The children are doing _so_ well at Hailsham, though, so overall I can’t complain. More importantly, how –”

Jerome gasps and clicks his fingers. It seems that, entirely without her assistance, he has managed to move himself from pretending to remember to associating her with _entirely_ the wrong memory. He is a terrible liar, to the extent that if she really was _Eleanor_ from whatever real-estate company she would be really quite offended that he has clearly only just recognised her – as it is, though, she feels sneakily triumphant.

“We met when I purchased the penthouse,” he clarifies, seemingly for himself rather than for her benefit. Georgina forces herself to look nonchalant, and he shakes his head, as if ashamed of his own blatantly terrible memory. “It feels like such a long time ago now, but I know it wasn’t really, in the grand scheme of things.” He pauses in the middle of his blustering to rest his crutch against the edge of the table – in such a position that she can easily imagine one of the waitresses tripping, but such a consequence clearly doesn’t occupy any of his attention – and to withdraw his wallet from his trouser pocket (beneath, Georgina can't help but notice, a royal blue sweater entirely too bright for someone so _unspeakably_ drab). After a moment, he passes a card across the table.

“I’ve been intending to get in touch with you,” he admits. “Unfortunately, I’ve decided that I’ll be selling the apartment. You did an excellent job the first time, so I intended to approach you again and see if you wanted the listing.”

“Selling?” Georgina blurts, before she can stop herself. It is a strange mix of feelings that all seem hugely inappropriate – but in her mind, that’s _Esmé’s_ apartment. It might not be so in the deeds, but there are shards of memories splitting into her consciousness that remove Jerome’s existence entirely; mornings in the master bedroom, as though he’d never even stepped foot inside it, nightcaps ( _and more_ ) in sitting rooms, the eventful night they had discovered entirely unexpected uses for his collection of expensive Japanese kitchen knives. _Don’t erase her_ , Georgina thinks, with a cold lump in her throat. It is only sheer force of will, and sheer force of her belief that she isn’t _really_ gone ( _she can’t be_ ), that allows her to keep her composure.

“It’s just that you seemed as though you’d be so happy there,” she manages, carefully neutral.

“Well, I had promised a friend that I wouldn’t sell, but that – well, it doesn’t seem like that would matter anymore.” Jerome seems to abruptly realize that he is over-sharing, and tuts, seemingly at himself. “In any case, the only reasons I had to keep the place seem…irrelevant now. And, between you and me, it’s entirely too big an apartment for two. Or one. Or even _five_.”

Georgina hums thoughtfully, takes the card and offers a shaky smile. “Well, I’m flattered. I’ll be in touch.”

“Thanks,” Jerome says pleasantly, and then turns his attention to his menu, as though it says anything of worth – which Georgina already knows from several hours of pointedly _not_ ordering a hilariously expensive continental breakfast, it really doesn’t. There is a beat of silence, the kind that almost certainly suggests that he is ready for her to make her exit and leave him in peace to enjoy his breakfast, but she can’t do that. She doesn’t have what she wants yet.

Of course, this is going to require some very tactical handling. She imagines that any mention of his estranged wife probably feels a little like pressing on a half-healed bruise.

“It must have been quite a mix-up,” she starts off, waiting purposefully until he looks up from his menu before she bothers to clarify. She needs to see his eyes. “With the paper, I mean. It isn’t every day you get to read your own obituary.”

Jerome grimaces. “Well, it was a little _traumatic_ actually. So many people _did_ die that day. For a moment, I almost felt like I actually was one of them after all. It was a horrible feeling.”

Georgina catches herself just before she rolls her eyes. Not a thought for the trauma suffered by those in the fire – it is all about his own very limited experience. Presumably his slightly injured leg has kept him awake with nightmares. _Of course he would think_ that _was traumatic_ , she can’t help but internally snipe, _he probably thinks being served non-organic milk is a travesty._

She folds her hands in front of her on the table-top, crossing her legs in an effort to appear somewhat comfortable with the direction their conversation is taking.

“Do you get the impression they might have been wrong about _others_ , too?” she asks. “Journalists can sometimes be so unreliable, as you yourself now know.”

This is where it is helpful to see his eyes. They twitch, just slightly, as though she is shining a bright light straight into them.

“I don’t know,” he replies, too evenly. “Possibly.”

 _There_ it is. Jerome Squalor does not and probably could never possess the self-awareness to know how much he has given away, but it is all there – the juxtaposition of the clipped answer and his usual rambling responses, the purse of his lips, the way he lowers his eyes, but doesn’t focus them on the menu or on anything else of note. He _knows_.

“I just mean,” Georgina says, desperately clinging onto a tone that she thinks might be a suitable imitation of nonchalance. “If it isn’t too much of a personal thing to say, it would probably be helpful for you to know for _sure_ about Esmé.”

Jerome’s eyes stay firmly downturned. “I suppose.”

“So you don’t, then?” she presses, fully aware that she might be pushing her luck. Before he can answer, a waiter returns and presents him with what is apparently his usual order ( _Earl Grey and a butter croissant, of course, as if he could possibly be any more dull_ ), but Georgina won’t be deterred. She waits an acceptable three seconds, long enough to ascertain that he intends to ignore the question.

“You don’t know _for sure?_ ”

He shifts marginally back in his seat, folding his arms in the most obvious display of defensiveness she has ever witnessed and tilting up his head to level her with a look that reminds her of a schoolboy being called in for a detention. No _wonder_ he was an easy con.

“Were you acquainted?” he asks, rather than answering the question.

“We met once or twice, I think. But you _don’t_ know for sure? That she’s alive or otherwise, I mean.”

“Well, how would I?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Georgina responds, dropping her tone and leaning in minutely across the table, desperately hoping that he might perceive such a movement as an invitation to trust her rather than aggression. “But _do you?_ ”

This type of interrogation usually induces hostility or honesty, and while she’s hoping for the latter, she would also settle for being the first person in the world to see the former. But, backed into a corner over a tea and croissant that he had intended to eat alone, Jerome takes a different route reserved only for those terrified of confrontation, and throws up his hands in a gesture of surrender.

“I _assume_ she’s dead,” he admits, with that same curious purse of his lips. _Good job you aren’t a poker player_.

Frustrated, Georgina shakes her head. “You _assume?_ ”

After a long sip of his coffee, which appears to be a method of keeping his mouth full long enough to avoid answering, Jerome clears his throat. When Georgina's cool eyes fail to waver, he rolls his own in an attempt at good humour. “Assume is like _guess_.”

Resisting the urge to injure him, or tell him that she can smell a liar from a mile away, or tell him that she knows a thousand ways to make him wish he _had_ died in that fire after all, Georgina counts back from ten. There’s no point. She is nothing if not logical, and her logical mind works backwards from his reluctance and pieces together the only realistic outcome – she’s alive, somewhere, and he knows it. As much as she’d like to know _where_ , she figures she’ll take it one step at a time. She flicks the edge of the card he handed to her earlier with one manicured fingernail, and supposes a poke around the penthouse for clues won’t do any harm.

“I _know_ what assume means,” she says, at length, and then offers him the most pleasant smile she can. There is the beginning of something, a feeling like panic, coiling in her stomach, and all she wants is to be _away_. “But thanks anyway. In any case, I’ll be in touch about the listing. I’d better leave you to your breakfast.”

Unable to completely mask his excitement that he’ll finally be left in peace, Jerome nevertheless manages a cheery smile and a little wave when she gathers herself to her feet again. Overwhelmed, head spinning with a mixture of relief and frustration and something else, an awful clinging, nagging feeling, she walks blindly in the downpour in the complete opposite direction to her car, bizarrely unable to catch her breath.

 _This is better_ , she reminds herself, pulse hammering in a maddening staccato, _she’s alive. Now you know for sure._

Of course, none of that explains the creeping, horrible dread she can feel spreading throughout her – the unshakeable feeling that Esmé might be out there, _somewhere_ , but that she doesn’t want to be found. What if she’s _somewhere_ , but she’s in the process of putting the whole sorry mess behind her? What if this is her version of faking her own death and leaving it all to the dust – and what if Georgina is nothing more than part of the dust? If she’s seen the messages, if she knows about the attempts she is making to get in contact, but she just doesn’t _want_ to? And what if, after all of it, that’s simply _it?_

 _Where is your evidence?_ whatever remains of her logical mind asks.

 _In there!_ the competing hysteria returns, _right_ there _, in that ridiculous sweater! The man she wouldn’t trust to look after his own_ head! _If_ he _knows, one way or another, how am_ I _still in the dark?_

Even teetering on the edge of some sort of precipice, force of habit compels her to adjust her bag on her shoulder while she walks – and then, bizarrely, there’s no strap to adjust.

_Oh, for the love of God._

The inconvenience is a blessing in disguise, in that it forces her to regain some semblance of calm. She is able to mechanically follow a process, to push the dread back down temporarily while she turns back and encourages herself – _one foot in front of the other, one at a time_ – back to the restaurant.

She enters as inconspicuously as she can, pleased to note that Jerome Squalor and his outrageously hideous sweater are paying their bill and making to leave. She takes the long way around, not eager to face him and his hideously knowing _eyes_ all over again, skirting behind booths and around what she can of the perimeter, ignoring curious glances from the staff.

And then, her timing is off and she has to pause. He stands at the table, the hand holding his wallet hovering over his pocket, and his brow momentarily furrows. Then, curiously, the left corner of his mouth twitches ever so slightly upwards. With that same odd little smile, he turns towards the counter – leaving Georgina enough time to sneak around the other side of the table and subtly slide her bag out from underneath – and asks whether they might be able to make him a drink to go.

“Earl Grey?” someone cheerfully clarifies.

“Oh, no thank you,” he says, in that soft tone that Georgina remembers snickering about, heads pressed together over her voicemail messages. And then, out of nowhere, the most boring man in the world comes out with the most convoluted coffee order she has ever heard – _non-fat, extra-hot, double-shot_. It is almost never-ending in length, and he stumbles twice or three times in trying to recall it, and suddenly, she’s _certain_ that she knows what to do next.

 


	4. Chapter 4

She stalks him out into the rain like a leopard with eyes firmly set on its prey, and briefly watches him contemplate how he can balance a coffee, an umbrella and a crutch before pouncing.

Even at the firm clasp of a hand on his arm – _hardly_ a knife to the throat, which would have been a thousand times more satisfying – he gets such a shock that he jolts forwards with a gasp.  Of course, in his state of apparent terror, either the umbrella, the crutch or the coffee was always going to be sacrificed and, unfortunately for Jerome, it’s the extra-hot coffee, which he manages to spill entirely over his already-injured leg.

In his shock, she manages to drag him into a side-street and position herself in front of him, eyes dark and arms folded.

“Ah – _Eleanor_ ,” he remembers, when he has hissed in agony for several more seconds and then regained his ability to speak. He is clearly irritated, in a vague, pathetic way, but he presses on with a half-smile anyway, like only _he_ could. “I thought you’d –”

“You lied to me earlier,” she interrupts in a hiss, unable to bring herself to listen to any more of his inane nonsense. The colour drains out of his face in a way that would thrill her in another context, but it’s been a very long couple of weeks. Georgina can feel the gravel creeping into her tone, the shadow creeping over her features, and it seems that he can detect those developments too, because he takes an uncertain step backwards, throat flickering as he swallows in poorly-concealed panic.

“I don’t know what you’re –”

“If I were you,” she growls fiercely. “I really _wouldn’t_ do it again. Now, I’ll give you one more chance. _Esmé_. Upstairs with you, I presume?”

He looks like he’s about to swallow his own tongue, and really, that is confirmation enough. But she can’t live with the uncertainty any longer.

“ _Answer me_ ,” she orders.

“This is absolutely –” he chokes out, utterly in shock. “Really, I have to say, this is _none_ of your business –”

In ordinary circumstances, Georgina has always considered herself a patient woman, at the very least in comparison to her peers, but the combination of a sheer, driving need for answers and an utterly uninhibited hatred of the lily-livered, pathetic weakling stuttering excuses in front of her push her well beyond the realm of ordinary circumstances. A grumble grows into a growl in her throat, and as soon as she opens her mouth, the fury spills out seemingly without her permission.

“Fucking _answer me!_ ” she roars, volume and pitch uncontrollably higher than intended, so much so that his hands fly up and he jumps backwards.

“What – please, get _away_ from me –”

“Oh, believe me, I’d like _nothing_ more,” Georgina bites back savagely. “If you’ll just do as you’re _told_ first, I’ll be more than happy to let you get back to whatever pointless activities you might have planned. _Tell me_ where she is.”

“Who _are_ you?” Jerome splutters, apparently still relying on his tired tactic of answering questions with questions to see him through this encounter. It occurs to her that he’s likely under orders not to answer this very question, though that doesn’t change the fact that he will be, whether it takes him a matter of seconds or hours (and she’s very much betting on seconds – bigger and better men have given up far worse as a result of her creative questioning techniques). “Are you one of _them?_ Your name isn’t even Eleanor, is it?”

“ _Bingo!_ ” Georgina barks, frustrated, feeling the angry heat burning in her cheeks. _Hysteria will not help_ , she thinks, but really, in this moment, it feels like it _might_ be. “You _really are_ one smart cookie.  Now,” she manages, lowering her voice to a threatening whisper and tapping the edge of her cane against his injured knee, as just a _gentle_ push in the correct direction. “Last chance. She’s with you, isn’t she?”

“Look,” he all-but-whimpers, shifting backwards again. It has seemingly not occurred to him that he towers at least seven or eight inches over her, nor that he outweighs her by likely nearing a hundred pounds, or that one of his hands could likely close all the way around her bicep. There is not even a hint of an instinct to fight, which is probably because he has never in his life needed to develop one. “Whatever this is, it really isn’t anything to do with me, and –”

“ _Yes_ or _no_ will be fine,” she enunciates, pressing the rounded metal tip roughly into the junction where thigh meets knee.

“Yes, yes, yes, alright, _yes_ ,” he concedes, wriggling away from the increasing pressure until his back brushes the bricks.

Despite already knowing the answer, Georgina cannot resist the rush of emotions that accompany this admission. Mostly, it’s a warm wave of predictable relief, with shades of the same chilly concern that had led her the wrong way out of the diner in the first place. Strangely, with the mystery solved, Esmé feels more likely to be truly _gone_ than she ever did before. But now is not the time for that.

“Well done,” she congratulates sarcastically, shifting forwards to follow him when he tries to put distance between them, until the hard heel of one of his Derby’s _clacks_ satisfyingly against the wall. There are a thousand other questions, all buzzing around the inside of her mind like snow gnats competing for her attention, but still the most important one, the one that has kept her from sleeping and kept her writing coded messages into newspapers and applying for part-time positions writing for fashion columns, springs to the front. It might blow her cover, might soften her threatening persona – but she asks it anyway, because she just needs to _know_.

“Is she alright?”

That wasn’t the question he had been expecting; that much is clear from the momentary shadow of complete confusion that clouds his eyes.

“What?” he asks, blinking as though seeing her for the first time. As anticipated, the little flicker of weakness is detectable even to someone as thick-skulled as Jerome Squalor, and he manages to pluck up the courage to peer down at her curiously. “Are you _family?_ This isn’t the introduction I’d have hoped for, but –”

Irritated, Georgina jerks the cane upwards again to give his knee a none-too-gentle swipe that makes him jerk forwards with a pained cry. “Are we really going to go through this again?” she asks. “None of your business. Just answer the _question_.”

“God – _yes_ , she’s fine!” Jerome yelps, clearly in agony.

Such an answer isn’t good enough for Georgina’s purposes, but it suddenly occurs to her that asking Jerome to explain the inside of his recently un-estranged wife’s head is probably roughly equivalent to asking a squirrel to explain nuclear fusion, and so she decides unhappily that it may be time to relent.

Dropping her cane back down to the floor, she reaches into her retrieved handbag and digs out the folded newspaper.

“Give her this,” she instructs, while he continues hissing in pain over his leg, thrusting it into his hand. “Tell her to call me.”

“Yes, alright, but _who actually are_ –”

“In the time it will take me to explain it to you, we might both have died of old age,” the optometrist interrupts drily. “She’ll work it out. Just do as I say.”

When her eyes flicker back up to his face, she catches a brief look of hesitation and raises a challenging eyebrow in response. Jerome weighs his options for a brief moment, eyes darting down to her cane as if predicting the likelihood that she’s going to batter him with it, and then he lowers his voice needlessly to a whisper, as though he hadn’t cried out in pain only moments before.

“I’m not meant to…” he begins nervously. “Nobody’s supposed to _know_.”

Georgina can’t resist a roll of her eyes. “Just do it,” she orders. “Because if you _don’t_ – and I’ll _know_ if you don’t – I can guarantee that you and I will be seeing much, _much_ more of each other.”

To emphasize her point, she produces his card from her breast pocket – not that it says anything especially interesting – and waves it at him with a little smile. Predictably, this action makes him remember the mention of the penthouse, and she watches with mild amusement as he turns pale.

“I’ve –” he breathes, horrified. For these purposes, he probably doesn’t need to know that she knew all along where he lived. Watching him believe that he’s become embroiled in a villainous cross-fire is the only joy she’s had in weeks, and it’s too good to ruin. “Oh, _God_ …”

“I imagine a day is long enough for her to read a newspaper,” she predicts, in a pleasant, lilting tone, adjusting her glasses and offering him a slow, sly smile as she turns her back to leave. “I do hope I won’t be seeing you around, Mr Squalor. For _your_ sake.”


End file.
